Newspapers

I'm confident that there's a way for newspapers to make money and survive. In fact, this financial apocalypse might be the only thing that will save them. You might be saying, "Are you nuts?" Well, here's my thought. The Newspaper industry is one of the oldest in the world and as a result it doesn't adapt to change quickly. Newspapers were supposed to die when the radio was invented and again when televisions entered every house but it didn't. I believe the entire industry became complacent. The newspaper companies became huge and with all huge companies it takes them a long time to change course. The financial downturn may FORCE them to act quickly and think outside of the box or outright fail. The internet should be looked at not as a problem but as one of the biggest opportunities. It is now easier for them to reach people than ever before. My iphone allows me to have the newspaper at all times! Amazon just released a new bigger Kindle specifically for document and NEWSPAPER viewing! People are reading more than they have ever before (granted it's mostly trashy blogs like this) which is great. There is a need for quality, well thought out news and reporting. There is a need for non-breaking news stories. There is a need for newspapers that the blogger and independent reporter can't fill because they don't have the recourses a big company offers.

One of the newspaper owners put it very well (I'm not sure who it was): The newspaper companies are NEWS companies and not paper distribution companies.

This is exactly correct! Figure out how to make money distributing quality, accurate news. The medium doesn't matter.

While I'm not a very big fan of Mark Cuban he did write a decent article about how he would save the newspaper industry. Here's the link...

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/04/26/1269/